Landowner says time is now for Travis Park

Started using Instagram. My apologies if these saturated photos become tiresome.

To its north stands the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, a state-of-the-art performance space scheduled to open in fall 2014.

Three blocks south is the St. Anthony Hotel, now owned by San Antonio-based BC Lynd Hospitality, which has said it plans to pour millions into the historic hotel’s restoration.

In the middle is Travis Park, perhaps the most loathsome of downtown public spaces because of its reputation as a haven for vagrants. Fair or not, its reputation is undeniable.

The conversation of how to revive the park should happen sooner rather than later, a nearby landowner said.

“It’s no secret that Travis Park is in a terrific location, but it’s somewhat lacking in usability by the downtown public,” Laurence P. Seiterle, a principal with Zurich International Properties, said. “I think it needs to be reinvigorated.”

Seiterle is landlord of multiple key properties downtown, including the Atlee B. Ayres Building one block east of the park.

He sees Travis Park as having the potential to become a quaint but popular city park like Jamison Square in Portland, Ore., where a low, waterfall-like feature is the main attraction for families.

“What they did was they created this fantastic mixed-use park that has a sandbox, it has public art, it has a water feature for the kids,” Seiterle said. “It has shading for the parents. Granted, it’s surrounded by high-density residential and retail.”

Travis Park could use some of those characteristics, Seiterle said.

“When you bring in the moms and the dads and the kids, the bad elements kind of go away on their own  they move on,” Seiterle said.

He suggests a public-private partnership to get the ball rolling.

Coincidentally, the City Council on Thursday passed new guidelines for public-private partnerships for specific projects and development — as opposed to sustained nonprofit groups like Centro Partnership and the HemisFair Park Area Redevelopment Corp.

The newly-blessed guidelines make Seiterle’s dream a possibility.

“If the private sector is proposing that they bring funding and the city brings funding, that’s kind of the idea behind public-private partnerships,” said Mike Frisbie, director of the city’s Capital Improvements Management Services department.

The city has not ignored Travis Park.

Most recently, for its mobile food truck pilot program, it placed food trucks there Tuesdays and Fridays at lunchtime, and on a handful of evenings in recent months. The St. Anthony Hotel chipped in by providing picnic tables for the trucks’ patrons.

A sliver of funding, $75,000 from the 2012-17 bond program, has been allocated for Travis Park’s electrical infrastructure.

Seiterle and BC Lynd Hospitality have not talked specifically about the park, but both believe, aside from the aesthetics, that the other key to its sustained success is programming — activities that will draw the public to the space.

“The key to Travis Park is a combination of doing physical renovation and improvement, but the linchpin really will be to really activate the park through intentional programming,” said Brandon Raney, CEO of BC Lynd Hospitality.

Locally, Seiterle likens Travis Park’s potential to the regular activities at Main Plaza and the popular Movies by Moonlight screenings at HemisFair Park.

“We have to utilize what we have,” Seiterle said. “Let’s not try to create new ones without taking care of what we have.”

“I’m not saying we have all the answers. I would love to start some conversation and let’s see what kind of feedback we get.”